A Week in Review/ True Journaling!

   I recall last week as a week of rain. It flew by so fast, but now if I think about it, we did have one day of sunshine. Claire and the grandchildren came for a three day visit. Their antics always make me smile. It's very much like watching the lambs next door, or any baby animals, they both amuse and intrigue. I could sit and watch the children play for hours. Tess and Steve prepared different crafts for Mari and Jack and they loved them. Tess painted paper tiaras and crowns with them and Steve helped them make cement garden stones. I won't forget being up in the tree house with Mari where we sang opera into the woods and listened for our echoes.
        

 

     I made progress on my hooked rug and I found a replacement cutting wheel for the fabric stripping machine a friend gave me. It's a vintage machine made of metal and very sturdy. Because it's old, the parts are hard to find. The internet is the end-all solution to these problems and Voila! I now have a working machine thanks to a helpful lady in Indiana. The wool to make a primitive hooked rug must all be cut into 1/4" strips. It would be time consuming to cut so much wool with scissors or rotary cutters, so they make little hand-cranked machines that you bolt onto a table, feed your cloth (in this case wool) along the metal plate while you crank the handle which runs the cloth over the cutting wheel and cuts it into strips. The rug hooking ladies get a kick out of calling themselves  hookers and strippers. Anyway, I've got my next two rugs planned out : )

     Chelsea and her little family moved to New Hampshire this week. We are very excited to visit them in New England this summer. We are also more than excited to think of holding our newest grandson again and getting to know him better. It's nice to have a new, happy reason to visit up north.  We've had great adventures in the south and we now live in a very beautiful place in Virginia, but my inner compass forever points homeward, to the northeast.
     We spent this Sunday in a different way than usual. I'm not a fan of Mother's Day nor other similar commercialized holidays. My daughters were all wonderful in honoring me with attention, so it's not about that. It's just a personal thing I guess. I dislike artificial reasons to be nice to people. Who needs a reminder to be nice to their mother on a specific day? I also knew if I went to church I would cry blubberingly during the music with thoughts of my mom, so we changed it up today and Steve and I went out together in the morning and then I cooked a Sunday dinner for Steve, Tess, Ian and me. There was no Sunday singing, but we did have music in the car : )